Neil Sedaka Embraces Heritage
of Yiddish Music at Carnegie
Hall
Offering further evidence
of the remarkable resurgence of Yiddish music, language and
culture in the U.S., rock and pop music legend Neil Sedaka
performed traditional Yiddish music with the world-renowned
Klezmatics, in a gala concert at Carnegie Hall, benefiting
The Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre, America’s sole-surviving
professional Yiddish theatre.
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg
announced on stage that a permanent home was acquired for
the Folksbiene Theatre at 2nd Avenue and East 6th Street.
Famed architect Daniel Liebeskind has donated his services
for the theatre's design.
The event’s concert chairman is piano prodigy
Hershey Felder, whose one-man musical play “Gershwin
Alone” opened on Broadway in 2001 and continues to tour
internationally to wide acclaim. Honorees for the event were
Roman R. Kent, chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish
Holocaust Survivors and Jeffrey S. Weisenfeld, of Bernstein
Investment Research and Management.
Joining Neil Sedaka
and the Klezmatics on stage was The New Yiddish Chorale,
under the direction of the world-recognized Yiddish music
expert, conductor and composer Zalmen Mlotek, recording star
Claire Barry of The Barry Sisters, Broadway star and Steinway
concert artist Hershey Felder, the beloved comedian Mal Z.
Lawrence, stars of the Yiddish theatre Joanne Borts, Eleanor
Reissa and Nell Snaidas, and a large children’s
chorus drawn from choruses and shuls from across the tri-State
area.
Neil Sedaka and the
Klezmatics, whose unprecedented collaboration will continue
this summer as additional dates in other cities are added,
will perform songs Sedaka recorded last year (with other
musicians) on his latest CD “Brighton
Beach Memories.”
“These are songs I heard and loved growing
up in Brighton Beach at family picnics and on long bus rides,” says
the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame member whose chart-topping
history dates back 45 years. “But what was to be a tribute
to my family has now mushroomed into an exciting artistic adventure.”
The Carnegie Hall concert
benefits America’s
only permanent professional Yiddish theatre, which Donald Lyons,
writing in the NY Post this season, called “one of the
city’s most remarkable cultural institutions.” Now
in its 89th consecutive season, the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre
is leading a uniquely intergenerational charge to popularize
Yiddish, and to go beyond keeping a rich cultural legacy from
disappearing, the stance of the legacy’s custodians in
recent years. The Sedaka/Klezmatics collaboration, dreamed
up by a leadership that for the first time in Folksbiene’s
history is comprised completely of American-born theatre professionals,
perfectly emblematizes their goal to foster new work that will
add to this legacy.
“Neil Sedaka’s warm and public embrace
of his cultural roots is deeply moving and in many respects
courageous,” says Mlotek, Folksbiene’s executive
director “It signals to a younger generation that the
rediscovery of a cultural heritage is not only rich and rewarding
but full of creative potential.”#
